a look at writing, marketing & the mindset to improve your skills in both.

From me (and others no doubt) you’ve been well-drilled in how crucial it is to keep your target market in the loop if you want to keep breaking records in your ‘Big Book of Business Success’ and that the route to that glory is through frequently creating/ adding to your online content.

But you sit down to write and you’re stuck. Or you have nothing you can think of that will be different from your fears- real or imagined- of bland, uninspiring white noise that would feature in that book Bert from Sesame Street loves to read- you know, ‘The Big Book of Boring Stories’. But it doesn’t have to be that way! Sometimes, the smallest thing is all you need in order to sit down and write 500 words or more. 500 words or more that your target market will read. Want to know why?

Because that’s what I’m doing right now. It just happened to me. I am standing in my living room, looking through the trees to the golf course that my place backs onto and the cicadas are buzzing as another muggy summers’ day grows dim. Dinner is heating up in the microwave, the rice is on the stove and I’ve been home a while after a day of crossing off a few key tasks. I should be content and enjoying what I got done for the day, right?

Except I’m not. I have homework due tomorrow for my uni degree that I fear will feature algebra (I love algebra like a kid loves spinach) and it’s not even done. I have an ongoing legal matter that my mind has been devoted to- nothing to do with my business of course- I’m a legit operator- but the legal fees and the time I have to devote going back and forth with my lawyer eats into the mental energy I’d rather be using for writing, giving people’s business name, brand and professional reputation the “handyman treatment” and feeling that buzz when I help them get the fantastic results they’d set out to achieve.

I started this year with such a buzz of anticipation, yet just a month in and I’m standing there with these other distractions going on that aren’t even related to my business. I think about the sales strategies I haven’t yet found the right combination for that will spring the vault open. I think about the puzzles with the missing pieces that will create a wonderful new picture for my business pursuits when I patch up those holes- and I wonder “why is this so difficult?” and feel that resistance against my life itself that makes me momentarily flirt with the idea of packing up, going overseas for 6 months and taking a breather from all this noise. Then it flashes into my mind…

I think of the big players out there, the multi-billionaire businessmen (and women) who have huge sums of money rolling in while they sleep. Right now, my road feels like a boggy, uneven bike track with roots and stones littering the jagged path. By comparison, I picture these big players cruising down multi-lane highways as the money rolls into their business like the digits on the fuel bowser when they fill up at the service station. But then I remember…

“Those freeways didn’t build themselves- they weren’t always there”

I think of the freeways up and down the East Coast here in Australia. Once upon a time, just a couple of hundred years ago, they weren’t even dirt carriage trails. Those highways and freeways we coast along daily, were once hacked out of bushland, blasted out of rock and dug out of the dirt by the pioneers of this country. They broke into a daily sweat, they fell ill, they worked long, arduous hours, weeks on end, just to shape the dirt carriage trails that began the routes connecting our biggest cities. They may be long gone, but were they to return today and ride along those freeways doing 110km/h on cruise control? I have no doubt they’d feel a real sense of pride few of us could understand. A pride that came from knowing they did the hard yards to forge something that we now enjoy so easily. Once upon a time, they’d have been lucky to make 100 metres of ground in 24 hours. Now they can travel between my place here on the Gold Coast and Melbourne, by road, in less than that time!

It made me realise that I- we- are not just entrepreneurs. We are the pioneers of our business. You don’t stop and give up. The pain of quitting and looking at what you left unfinished doesn’t compare to that feeling when you reach the milestone, when that last metre of carriageway is constructed, when you turn around, reflect on your destination and all the times your resilience was tested and you wondered why you bother doing this and you think to yourself “It is finished”.

That is how freeways are built…

And this is just an example of how one small, seemingly unrelated observation, could be the inspiration for your next post that goes on to be a hit with everybody who reads it. You just have to keep on working at it, and be prepared for that moment of inspiration when it comes. I await your own “screen door” moment. What happens next is up to you…

Thanks for the article. It is a timely reminder that impatience can be an impediment, nothing is achieved without hard work and that inspiration can arrive in all sorts of guises. So, continue to be positive!

No problems, Graham! For me, this little experience was a reminder that we can get so fixated on worrying about planting a forest that we forget the seed in our hands that only needs to be planted into the dirt.